Hillary Clinton's shadow campaign

Among their concerns: Why put herself through the campaign pulverizer again and risk ending her groundbreaking career on a low note? She could still wield plenty of influence from the outside ­— and enjoy a normal, fulfilling family life for the first time in who knows how long. People insist her health is not a worry, but it was just a year ago that she suffered a blood clot in her head after fainting.

Chief among those in the “no” camp is Clinton’s chief of staff at the State Department, Cheryl Mills, according to several people familiar with her thinking. Another close Clinton confidante, Maggie Williams, who took the helm of the 2008 campaign after a staff shake-up, is also said to have reservations for the same reason — the DNA-altering experience of a modern presidential campaign in which nothing is guaranteed.

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The people cheerleading Clinton on the most are often less close to her. Their focus is primarily on winning ­ — they know Republicans probably won’t put up a candidate as weak as Romney next time and see Clinton as far and away their best shot.

Whatever their position, this much is true: From her most intimate associates to young activists just signing up, the majority are behaving as if a campaign will happen.

That doesn’t mean they’re certain it will. Her allies see the odds strongly in favor of another campaign but are also realistic that the world might look different in a year. Beyond potential health concerns, an unforeseen event could make running more complicated. Democrats could struggle mightily in the midterms, and Obama could have another difficult year. Another foreign policy headache could emerge, posing a fresh challenge for the former secretary.

Several sources said in interviews that her team is discussing how she will weigh in on policy debates over the course of the next year. She is working closely with clusters of aides on different policy initiatives — one involves child development, and Clinton is also being advised to address income inequality. Her memoir about her time at the State Department, initially expected for June, is likely to be out later in the summer, putting a book tour closer to the time when she would campaign for candidates in the midterms. That’s also closer to when she’s likely to announce her plans, after the November election.

“This is a very personal decision, one she has said she won’t be making anytime soon,” said Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill, when asked about the campaign presentation with Dewey Square consultants. Officials with the group declined to comment.

A place called Clintonland

The question hovering over all of these deliberations is what the 2016 version of the place called Clintonland ­ — a universe where proximity to the center is paramount and people have been known to exaggerate their closeness — would look like if she runs.

Her supporters maintain that some staffers whose voices should have been heard during the 2008 campaign were held back, and many of those people are advising her now. She didn’t lose 2008 by a lot, others point out, and not everything about the campaign was bad.

Still, the structure of some of Clinton’s past ventures, most notably the 2008 campaign, has been known to resemble less an org chart than a stew of dysfunction. She failed to establish clear lines of authority, bitter rivalries formed, and the principal ended up getting dragged into the chaos. Her world has historically been a ring of concentric circles of advisers, sometimes in competition.

Among the goals her supporters had when she left the State Department, one stood out: Send a message that she had absorbed the lessons of 2008. Many point to her tenure at the State Department as evidence that she had: Her staff — led by Mills along with Abedin, Marshall, longtime spokesman Reines and policy adviser Jake Sullivan — was generally seen as a well-functioning unit. Sullivan, who now works for Biden, would likely play a prominent role in a campaign.

One widely watched metric of change will undoubtedly be who from the last campaign returns. Of the six people most publicly identified with her last campaign, none is poised to return to their previous title.

The person from 2008 who’s asked about most is Mark Penn. Clinton’s pollster, chief strategist and message guru all wrapped into one, Penn was the person vilified the most by donors and operatives after she lost.

Rumors swirled among Washington operatives in the fall that Penn might be back as an important adviser to Clinton. He is said to still speak with the Clintons but is currently focused on corporate work.

“I’m all in with Microsoft as their executive vice president of global advertising and strategy and enjoying meeting new challenges there,” Penn said in an email.

Howard Wolfson, her longtime spokesman, just spent five years working for former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg. Phil Singer, a prominent 2008 spokesman, now advises New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and could help establish an outside communications effort supporting her. Campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle, a Clinton lifer who bore blame internally over how she handled that role, is unlikely to be asked to rejoin, nor has she expressed interest in it. She went on to work for Obama and is now president of a financial services company.

Still, one trait of Clintonland over the years is its ever-shifting roster. Someone on the outs one year can reemerge years later; proximity to the principal can change based on the needs of the moment. The list of former aides, friends and employees whose advice could be sought is virtually infinite for a couple whose worlds span three decades, two states and Washington, D.C.

One Clinton veteran likely to play an informal role if she runs is Neera Tanden, president of the liberal think tank Center for American Progress. She’s a key voice on progressive issues and shares a history with Clinton dating back to her 2000 Senate race, and she still speaks with Clinton.

Mandy Grunwald has been making ads and videos for both Clintons for decades, in addition to being an adviser. But Grunwald also worked on Elizabeth Warren’s successful 2012 Senate campaign and is still in the senator’s circle, making a possible return to Clinton harder to read.

It’s widely accepted that a second Clinton campaign would need and want fresh blood, too. One oft-mentioned possibility is Jen O’Malley Dillon, a deputy campaign manager for Obama. Another is Robby Mook, a young operative on Clinton’s 2008 effort who recently ran her friend Terry McAuliffe’s successful campaign for Virginia governor. Schriock and Guy Cecil, who rose within Clinton’s ‘08 campaign after a shakeup and is now overseeing the party’s efforts to keep the Senate in this year’s midterms, also come up repeatedly as potential 2016 hires.

One adviser predicted a “hybrid” of seasoned veterans as well as newcomers comprising a future campaign. Whouley, Baker and Moore may be doing some legwork now, but the people officially running a campaign would be a younger group.

What the talent pool can’t answer is what Clinton learned from last time; that will become apparent only once she brings on a political staff of her own, for a real campaign. Clinton made few new hires in the second half of last year and has not meaningfully expanded her team of paid political advisers since she left the State Department. That’s unlikely to change soon; anyone looking for a big burst of activity is likely to come away disappointed. Despite all the buildup in her name, Clinton herself is not acting like a candidate.

Chelsea and Bill

Everyone knows that there is no one closer to Hillary Clinton than her husband and daughter. What’s different these days is how Bill and Chelsea are now viewed when the conversation turns to questions about Hillary’s future.

In the run-up to the 2008 campaign, and even to the 2004 campaign, Democrats — not to say Hillary Clinton’s closest advisers — saw Bill Clinton as a colossal force behind his wife’s aspirations. But in the intervening years, Hillary has become as big a name in her own right, Chelsea has taken on a much higher profile and Bill Clinton has been, maybe only slightly, eclipsed by the women in his family.

In interviews for this article, just about every close Hillary Clinton ally, asked to describe who is at the top of her organizational chart, gives the same answer: Chelsea. Exactly what that translates into is shrouded in a bit of mystery. It would be hard to overstate the closeness between Hillary Clinton and her only child, who is known to have more of her mother’s signature caution and private approach, than her father’s more free-wheeling style. The extent to which she’s expanded her portfolio within their family foundation has surprised even longtime Clinton insiders.

But in terms of 2016, people close to the Clintons say it is difficult to divine whether Chelsea wants her mother to run.

In 2003, when some Clinton supporters urged her to jump into the race against George W. Bush, Chelsea Clinton disagreed. She told her mother she owed it to New Yorkers to complete her Senate term, as she had promised when she ran. It was a defining moment in Hillary Clinton’s political life.

Since then, Chelsea Clinton has become deeply involved in her parents’ work. She is a major presence at their family foundation, working for the last two years on a leadership change and hewing to many of her father’s philanthropic issue sets.

Chelsea Clinton has said the time she spent on the campaign trail for her mother in 2008 moved her to want to do more in public service. She could be very helpful in bridging a generational divide for her mother, who will inevitably face questions about her age. She’s put time into developing a social media presence.

But the 33-year-old New Yorker, who married in 2010 and recently hinted that 2014 could be the year she makes her mother a grandparent, has publicly tried to protect her mother’s right to just say no.

Asked in October if she’s like to see her mother become the first female president, Chelsea Clinton told Bloomberg News, “Before anything else, she is my mom. So I want her to do whatever she wants to do. … I am very strongly exercising my prerogative as a daughter to make sure my mom has this year to rest and reflect.”

Clinton herself has not exercised that prerogative very much since leaving State. She has been active giving paid speeches and collecting an unheard-of number of awards from groups who want to use her celebrity to highlight their causes.

For his part, Bill Clinton has been careful not to signal what he thinks his wife should do. People who spend time with the former president say he is animated in private conversations about 2016. He’s deeply aware of how super PACs have transformed the presidential landscape — for Democrats and Republicans. The unrecovered political addict still waxes on about poll numbers — not his wife’s, but in specific races he’s interested in, like this year’s Senate and governor races in Arkansas.

Yet these people say his tone toward his wife is deferential, and he’s made clear she is the person making the ultimate decision.

“I think, and she believes, that the country should spend at least another year working very hard on the problems we have,” Bill Clinton told CNN Español last month. “We have very serious challenges in America, and we have responsibilities around the world. I think it’s a big mistake; this constant four-year, peripatetic campaign is not good for America.”

At a Democratic Governors Association fundraiser that Clinton headlined in New York last year, the group’s chairman, Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin, told guests before the former president spoke that Hillary Clinton will run for president and need their support, according to an attendee. Bill Clinton teasingly replied with surprise to hear his wife had made a decision.

A student of history, he is well aware of the legacy project a second Clinton presidency represents. But her loss in 2008 dented his foundation’s fundraising and imposed misery on all involved.

The misery that he himself contributed to is not generally cited as a concern these days. His off-message rants, legendary during that campaign, essentially disappeared during her four years at State. During that time, his wife finally established her own identity, a fact all members of the family seem aware of.

Bill Clinton has also continued to amass political chits that could be useful for Hillary down the road. He has endorsed a string of candidates running against people who did not back his wife in 2008. And he has weighed in on issues in ways that could be helpful to his wife, given the assumption people make that one is speaking for the other.

Hillary Clinton’s allies believe the timing is better for her now than in 2008. Warren is popular among the base, but she’s been adamant she’s not running, and if she did, it’s hard to imagine her taking the broader party by storm the way Obama did.

Still, when it comes to running a national campaign, 2008 is practically another era. Technology and social media have made things infinitely more complex and unwieldy than Clinton’s last experience.

None of this is lost on the would-be candidate or her allies.

At the Dewey Square Group meeting in her northwest Washington, D.C. home, Clinton received a rundown of key dates of a potential campaign as well as a sketch of TV advertising costs and other tasks that would be key to a second run.

It was all a reminder of just how much her life would be subsumed by another campaign.

“No one around her,” said one Clinton insider, “is under any illusions.”